Oh my friends, I have wonderful links for you!

Via Slumbering Lungfish, blog of the deeply hilarious Lore Sjoberg, I was directed to Garkov.  Garkov is a site that takes old Garfield strips and cranks the dialogue through a Markov Chain, a stochastic substitution/shuffling process that has been used in chatbots like ELIZA (although not in the code for Eliza specifically, as far as I’m aware).  The results are often gleefully insane.

But Garkov also has a treasure trove of Garfield-related links on its main page, ranging from the Garfield Variations to the Garfield Randomizer, to Nothingfield (which seems to have been directed by Ingmar Bergen).  My personal favorite?  Barfield: the one with the fart jokes.

Also well worth seeing:  a Garfield/President Garfield mashup from the frozen north.  The artist doesn’t seem to have links that lead to individual comics, but you’ll find it if you scroll down the page.

more »

This via Shock Till You Drop, to which I was referred by AICN.

It doesn’t even look real, does it?  It’s like a poster someone would design as a joke.

But then, one could argue that Rob Zombie’s entire film career - entire life, even - is one elaborate joke.

Anyway, real or not, my world is slightly brighter for having seen this.

So last May (that’s May 2007), Matt “Call Me the Webmaster” Wrather and I were taking in The Coast of Utopia, a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard. It covers the part of Russian history most people don’t know a lot about — between when Catherine the Great had sex with a horse and when Animal Farm picks up.

So anyway, during one of the intermissions, I was sort of free-associating, as is my wont. And like an apple hitting me on the head (see how I’m referring both to Newton and orchards?) I realized that Tobey Maguire is in both Spider-Man and The Cider House Rules. And that Spider and Cider rhyme. And then I knew I was doomed. I was going to have to do something about it.

So here you go, internet. The Spider House Rules.

I don’t really expect it to get watched that much, since The Cider House Rules isn’t that well-known. But as long as you guys are impressed, I will not have sat through the terrible 1992 Michael Caine thriller Blue Ice in vain (I needed him holding a gun).

What is Cthulhu, really? Why are the Great Old Ones here on Earth, and what are their plans?

These are some of the great mysteries that have been haunting us since H.P. Lovecraft first introduced his Cthulhu mythos in the 1920s.

But those questions are dumb. The real question is: how the hell are you supposed to pronounce his freakin’ name?

Yes, yes. I know you all want to say, “It’s kuh-THOO-loo, obviously.”

Yes. Obviously.

But why? Tradition? Because the author said so? ‘Cause that’s how they say it in the role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu(tm)?

No. I disagree. You heard it here first, folks. “Cthulhu” should–nay, MUST–be pronounced “THOO-loo.”

Before you start yelling, hear me out, below the magic fold…

more »

Actually, I was hoping you guys could tell ME. I realized today that I can’t name a single woman magician. Which is a little odd, because women are well-represented in pretty much every other performing art. I’m sure there ARE female illusionists, but for whatever reason, none of them has ever become famous.

So I ask you, what is it about magic that makes it such an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession? Is it that women don’t wear top hats? Perhaps audiences aren’t comfortable with girls bossing around cute male assistants and volunteers? Or is it repressed cultural memories of the Salem Witch Trials?

My theory is that the ceiling is not merely glass, but invisible glass.

We at OTI were pretty much last on last summer’s Soulja Boy bandwagon, so to rectify the situation, we are taking a pro-active stance in reporting Soulja-boy related news. In case you haven’t heard, Ice-T be beefin wit Soulja Boy. (Wow. Does my writing that sentence make you as uncomfortable as it makes me?) Get the details and offer your own analysis after the jump.

more »

You know, I said I was going to stop writing about horror so much.  But that was before I found out about the Final Girl Film Club, which just seems like too much fun to pass up.  Basically how it works is a bunch of us film nerds agree to review the same obscure horror film on the same day, thus fostering community, attracting new visitors to our respective sites, and generally making the internet just a smidge more similar to having actual friends.  (By the way, If you haven’t seen Stacey Ponder’s little new-media empire, which in addition to the aforementioned Film Club includes two blogs, assorted facebook gruppen, and an agreeably DIY webseries; it’s all well worth a look.  Provided you like horror.  Which if you don’t, by now you’ve probably already clicked through to one of our Disney Princess posts.) more »

Yes, George Carlin has died of heart failure. He was 71.

Check out his Times write-up here. It does a better job of summing up his illustrious career than a chump like me ever could.

I had the pleasure of seeing George Carlin live once — he came to Yale to give a talk; it was billed as something between a lecture and a stand-up set. This was about six, maybe seven years ago.

He also ennumerated his moral and religious beliefs (not many of the latter, Mr. Carlin was none too fond of religion). He spent a fair amount of time on a bit I’ve heard since — reducing the ten commandments to two. I remember what he said, and in lieu of a review of his amazing career here (he hardly needs a guy like me to praise him) I’ll list those two commandments as I still remember them, and a few other remarks on his remarkable legacy, after the jump…

more »

According to IMDB’s June 5th edition of Studio Briefing, Angelina Jolie brought up in public what many of us were thinking privately: Where in the world are Disney’s black princesses?

Disney has had Chinese, Native American, Middle Eastern, mermaid, and even Hawaiian heroines–not to mention its many dog, cat, and mouse heroines. And Latinas at least got The Three Caballeros, which featured such memorable female characters as “The Brazilian Girl,” “Mexico Girl #1,” and “Mexico Girl #2.” What about the sistahs? More importantly, as a white girl, am I even allowed to say “sistahs”?

Evidently Ms. Jolie didn’t know about Disney’s upcoming new animated feature, a film slated to arrive in more than a year and a half but has already gathered around itself much controversy.

more »